DP-300 Plan and configure a high availability and disaster recovery environment — 40 Questions

Question 1

Your company has an Azure SQL Database in the General Purpose tier. You need to reduce the recovery point objective (RPO) from 1 hour to less than 1 minute for disaster recovery. Which action should you take?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Upgrade the database to Business Critical tier.. None of the listed options reduce the geo-replication RPO to under 1 minute. Upgrading to Business Critical (B) improves local HA with synchronous replicas but does not affect geo-replication, which remains asynchronous with an RPO of about 1 hour. Enabling zone redundancy (C) protects against zone failures, not regional disasters. Increasing backup retention (A) or DTU/vCore (D) does not change replication mode. To achieve sub-minute RPO for geo-disaster recovery, you must configure Active Geo-Replication or a failover group, which are not among the options.

Answer

Increase the backup retention period to 35 days.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the database.

Answer

Increase the DTU or vCore count.

Question 2

You have an Azure SQL Managed Instance in the East US region. To meet a 1-hour RPO and 2-hour RTO, you configure a failover group with a secondary in West US using automatic failover. During a test, you notice that the RTO is consistently 10 minutes longer than required. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The failover group has a grace period of 20 minutes configured.. The failover group's automatic failover includes a grace period (default 20 minutes) that delays the actual failover after detecting unavailability. This grace period directly contributes to the RTO, explaining the 10-minute exceedance of the required 2-hour RTO. Option A is incorrect because Microsoft Entra ID authentication does not add noticeable latency to the failover process; authentication occurs independently of replication and failover. Option B is incorrect because asynchronous commit is the standard replication mode for failover groups and does not inherently cause additional delay beyond the grace period; the issue is not the commit mode but the waiting period before failover. Option D is incorrect because the secondary database is automatically seeded when the failover group is created; no manual restore is needed.

Answer

The failover group uses Microsoft Entra ID authentication, which adds latency.

Answer

The secondary database is configured with asynchronous commit, causing delay.

Answer

The secondary database is not seeded and needs to be restored.

Question 3

You have an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical tier without zone redundancy. You need to configure a disaster recovery plan that ensures the database is available in a different Azure region within 1 hour of a regional outage. The solution must minimize data loss and not require manual intervention. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary region and enable auto-failover groups.. Active geo-replication provides asynchronous replication to a secondary region, and auto-failover groups enable automatic failover without manual intervention, meeting the RTO of 1 hour with minimal data loss. Option B is incorrect because simply creating a failover group does not guarantee automatic failover; the failover policy must be set to automatic, which is explicitly included in option A. Also, active geo-replication must be configured before setting up the failover group for single databases. Option C (geo-restore) has a longer RTO and potential data loss. Option D (copy-only backups) is not a disaster recovery solution.

Answer

Create a failover group between two servers in different regions.

Answer

Use geo-restore of the latest backup.

Answer

Configure copy-only backups to a secondary region.

Question 4

You manage an Azure SQL Database that uses the General Purpose tier. The database has a failover group with a secondary in a paired region. During a regional outage, you initiate a forced failover. After the outage is resolved, you want to bring the original primary region back online without data loss. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Wait for data synchronization, then initiate a planned failover.. After a forced failover, the original primary becomes a secondary and automatically synchronizes data when the region recovers. Once synchronization completes, initiating another forced failover from the new primary to the old primary (option A) switches roles without data loss because all transactions are committed and data is consistent. A planned failover (option C) is designed for graceful, non-emergency role changes when the primary is online and can be intentionally demoted; however, in this scenario, after a forced failover, the system expects a forced failover to reverse roles. Attempting a planned failover would not be valid because the old primary may not be in the correct state for a planned operation. Options B and D are incorrect: option B repeats an unspecified failover, and option D would cause data loss.

Answer

Initiate a forced failover from the new primary to the old primary.

Answer

Perform a forced failover again to switch back.

Answer

Delete the failover group and recreate it with the original primary as primary.

Question 5

You manage an Azure SQL Database in the East US region. The database uses the General Purpose service tier with geo-redundant backup storage. You need to ensure that in the event of a regional outage, you can restore the database to the West US region with the least possible downtime. What should you use?

Accepted Answer

Use the geo-restore feature to restore from the geo-redundant backups to a new database in West US.. Geo-restore from geo-redundant backups allows restoring to a different region, meeting the requirement with minimal downtime. Option A is wrong because active geo-replication is not configured by default and would require manual setup, which is not the least possible downtime. Option C is wrong because creating a copy-only backup and manually transferring it to West US is time-consuming and not automated. Option D is wrong because a point-in-time restore can only restore to a new database within the same region, not to a different region.

Answer

Configure active geo-replication to a secondary server in West US.

Answer

Create a copy-only backup and manually transfer it to West US.

Answer

Perform a point-in-time restore to a new database in West US.

Question 6

You have an Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication. You need to monitor the replication lag to ensure the RPO is met. Which metric should you monitor?

Accepted Answer

Replication lag. 'Replication lag' metric directly measures the delay in seconds between primary and secondary. Option A (Data IO percentage) is a performance metric. Option C (DTU consumption) is related to resource usage. Option D (Deadlocks) is unrelated.

Answer

DTU consumption

Answer

Data IO percentage

Answer

Deadlocks

Question 7

A company plans to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. They require a high availability solution that provides automatic failover between replicas within the same region with an RPO of 0 and an RTO of less than 30 seconds. Which service tier should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical. The Business Critical service tier for Azure SQL Managed Instance uses Always On availability groups with synchronous replicas, ensuring zero data loss (RPO=0) and fast automatic failover with RTO under 30 seconds. Option B is wrong because General Purpose uses asynchronous replicas, which cannot guarantee zero data loss. Option C is wrong because Azure SQL Database (single) is a different service offering, not Managed Instance, and its high availability model does not provide the same region-level automatic failover with synchronous replication required for RPO=0 and RTO<30s. Option D is wrong because Hyperscale is a service tier for single databases, not Managed Instance, and its high availability model does not meet the specified RPO and RTO requirements.

Answer

General Purpose

Answer

Azure SQL Database (single)

Answer

Hyperscale

Question 8

Your company runs a critical application on Azure SQL Managed Instance in the North Europe region. The application requires an RPO of 5 minutes and an RTO of 2 hours during a regional disaster. The current setup uses a single instance with geo-redundant backup storage (RA-GRS). During a disaster recovery planning session, you discover that geo-restore from RA-GRS backups takes approximately 4 hours to complete, which exceeds the RTO. You need to modify the disaster recovery solution to meet the RTO without exceeding the budget significantly. The solution must minimize administrative overhead. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a secondary instance in a different region and configure a failover group.. Configuring a failover group between two instances in different regions provides automated fast failover with an RTO of typically minutes, meeting the RTO requirement. Option A is wrong because changing to LRS backup storage and relying on point-in-time restore does not provide regional disaster recovery; PITR is for within-region point-in-time recovery, not for geo-restore, and LRS reduces redundancy. Option B is wrong because zone redundancy protects against failures within a single region (e.g., an availability zone outage), not against a regional disaster. Option D is wrong because scaling to a higher service tier does not significantly improve geo-restore performance; geo-restore time is primarily dependent on database size and the number of concurrent restores, not the service tier.

Answer

Change backup storage to locally-redundant (LRS) and rely on point-in-time restore.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the primary instance.

Answer

Scale the instance to a higher service tier to improve restore performance.

Question 9

You are a database administrator for a startup that uses Azure SQL Database for its main application. The database is currently in the West US region using the General Purpose service tier. The company expects rapid growth and wants to ensure high availability within the region. They want to minimize downtime during planned maintenance. The application uses read-heavy workloads, and they want to offload read traffic to a secondary replica. The budget is flexible but should be justified. What should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Upgrade the database to the Business Critical service tier and enable read scale-out.. Upgrading to Business Critical provides multiple replicas, automatic failover, and the ability to enable read scale-out to offload read traffic. Option A is wrong because enabling zone redundancy on General Purpose only provides high availability across zones but does not provide a readable secondary for read offload. Option B is wrong because the General Purpose service tier does not support readable secondaries; that feature is only available in Business Critical or Hyperscale. Option C is wrong because active geo-replication is designed for regional disaster recovery, not for intra-region high availability or read offload.

Answer

Enable zone redundancy on the current General Purpose database.

Answer

Configure a readable secondary on the current General Purpose database.

Answer

Create a secondary database in a different region and use active geo-replication.

Question 10

Your company runs a mission-critical application on Azure SQL Database in the East US region. You need to ensure automatic failover with zero data loss in case of a regional outage. Which deployment option should you use?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a Business Critical tier database and configure an auto-failover group with a readable secondary in a paired region.. To achieve automatic failover with zero data loss during a regional outage, you need a solution that supports synchronous replication for a secondary replica in another region. Azure SQL Database Business Critical tier (or Premium tier) supports auto-failover groups with a readable secondary in a paired region, where the secondary is kept in sync synchronously, ensuring no data loss (RPO=0). Option A correctly describes this configuration. General Purpose tier (Option B) uses asynchronous geo-replication, which has potential data loss. Hyperscale tier (Option C) supports zone redundancy but not synchronous replication across regions for auto-failover groups. Serverless tier (Option D) is not suitable for mission-critical workloads and does not provide the required availability guarantees.

Answer

Deploy a General Purpose tier database with geo-replication.

Answer

Deploy a Hyperscale tier database with zone redundancy.

Answer

Deploy a Serverless tier database with active geo-replication.

Question 11

You administer a SQL Managed Instance in the West Europe region. You need to create a disaster recovery replica in North Europe with automated failover. The replica must be readable and support backups. What should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Create a failover group with the secondary instance in North Europe.. SQL Managed Instance supports failover groups for automated failover between regions, and the secondary instance in a failover group is readable and supports backups. Option A is incorrect because log shipping is not supported for SQL Managed Instance. Option B is incorrect because active geo-replication is not supported for SQL Managed Instance; failover groups are the appropriate solution. Option C is incorrect because the secondary instance in a failover group is readable and can be used for read-only workloads.

Answer

Set up log shipping from West Europe to North Europe.

Answer

Configure active geo-replication between the instances.

Answer

Create a failover group, but note the secondary is not readable.

Question 12

You have an Azure SQL Database in the Business Critical tier with a failover group to a secondary region. The primary region experiences a full outage. What is the expected recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) if you initiate a manual failover?

Accepted Answer

RTO of 30 seconds, RPO of 0.. In Azure SQL Database Business Critical tier with a failover group, synchronous replication ensures zero data loss during a failover, resulting in an RPO of 0. The RTO for a manual failover is typically around 30 seconds. Option A is incorrect because the RTO is 5 minutes, which is too high for Business Critical. Option B is incorrect because the RPO is 5 seconds, not zero. Option C is incorrect because both RTO (1 hour) and RPO (5 minutes) are much higher than what Business Critical offers.

Answer

RTO of 5 minutes, RPO of 1 second.

Answer

RTO of 30 seconds, RPO of 5 seconds.

Answer

RTO of 1 hour, RPO of 5 minutes.

Question 13

Your company uses Azure SQL Database Hyperscale tier for a large data warehouse. You need to implement disaster recovery with the ability to perform point-in-time restore in the secondary region. What is the best approach?

Accepted Answer

Configure geo-replication to a secondary Hyperscale database in the secondary region.. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale tier supports geo-replication (currently in preview), which creates a readable secondary database in a different region. This secondary database also supports point-in-time restore within the secondary region, meeting the requirement for disaster recovery with point-in-time restore capability. Option B is incorrect because auto-failover groups are not supported for Hyperscale databases. Option C is incorrect because geo-restore of automated backups has a higher recovery point objective (RPO) compared to geo-replication. Option D is incorrect as failover groups are not supported for Hyperscale.

Answer

Configure auto-failover groups between regions.

Answer

Use geo-restore of automated backups.

Answer

Create a failover group with manual failover.

Question 14

You are designing a high availability solution for an Azure SQL Database used by a critical application. The application requires no more than 5 seconds of data loss and automatic failover within 1 minute. Which service tier and configuration should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Critical tier with zone redundancy.. Business Critical tier with zone redundancy provides automatic failover within seconds and zero data loss, meeting the RPO of 5 seconds and RTO of 1 minute. Option A is incorrect because Hyperscale tier with geo-replication and auto-failover group typically has a higher RTO (often up to 1 hour) and RPO may exceed 5 seconds. Option B is incorrect because Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy does not provide automatic failover on its own; it only offers local resilience. Option C is incorrect because General Purpose tier with active geo-replication has a higher RTO (up to 1 hour) and does not guarantee an RPO of 5 seconds.

Answer

Hyperscale tier with geo-replication and auto-failover group.

Answer

Hyperscale tier with zone redundancy.

Answer

General Purpose tier with active geo-replication.

Question 15

You have a SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine running a critical OLTP workload. You need to achieve high availability with automatic failover and no shared storage. The solution must use Azure features and avoid complex clustering configurations. What should you implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Always On Availability Group with automatic failover.. Always On Availability Groups provide high availability and automatic failover without requiring shared storage, and they leverage Azure features like internal load balancer. Option B (log shipping) offers disaster recovery but not automatic failover. Option C (database mirroring) is deprecated and not recommended for new implementations. Option D (Failover Cluster Instance) requires shared storage, which is not desired.

Answer

Set up log shipping to a secondary VM.

Answer

Use database mirroring with automatic failover.

Answer

Deploy a Windows Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) using Azure Shared Disks.

Question 16

You need to ensure that an Azure SQL Managed Instance remains available in the event of a single availability zone failure in a region that supports availability zones. What should you configure?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the instance in Business Critical tier with zone-redundant configuration.. For zone redundancy in Azure SQL Managed Instance, the Business Critical tier is required. Option D is correct because it specifies deploying in Business Critical tier with zone-redundant configuration, which provides resilience within a single region across availability zones. Option A is incorrect because a failover group to another region addresses regional disasters, not zonal failures. Option B is incorrect because the General Purpose tier does not support zone redundancy. Option C is incorrect because Hyperscale is a service tier for Azure SQL Database, not for Managed Instance.

Answer

Configure a failover group to another region.

Answer

Deploy the instance in General Purpose tier with zone redundancy.

Answer

Use a Hyperscale tier instance with zone redundancy.

Question 17

Your company uses Azure SQL Database with active geo-replication for disaster recovery. During a drill, you need to verify that the secondary database is ready for failover and that data synchronization is current. Which query should you run on the secondary database?

Accepted Answer

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_geo_replication_link_status;. Sys.dm_geo_replication_link_status provides replication lag and the last replicated transaction for geo-replicated databases. Option A is wrong because sys.dm_continuous_copy_status is deprecated and no longer used for geo-replication monitoring. Option C is wrong because sys.dm_database_copies is for copy-only operations, not ongoing replication. Option D is wrong because sys.dm_replication_status is for transactional replication, not geo-replication.

Answer

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_continuous_copy_status;

Answer

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_database_copies;

Answer

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_replication_status;

Question 18

Which TWO actions should you take to minimize downtime during a planned failover of an Azure SQL Database failover group? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Ensure the failover group is configured for manual failover.. For a planned failover of an Azure SQL Database failover group, you should ensure the failover is manual (C) and then initiate a planned failover (E). This approach gives you control over the timing and ensures no data loss because the secondary is fully synchronized before the switch. Option A (scaling up) does not reduce downtime during failover; it affects performance but not failover behavior. Option B (terminating connections) is unnecessary because the failover process handles connection redirection. Option D (disabling automatic failover) is not required for a planned failover and could actually increase risk if an unplanned event occurs.

Answer

Scale up the primary database to a higher service objective.

Answer

Terminate all active connections to the primary database.

Answer

Disable automatic failover on the failover group.

Question 19

Which THREE components are required to configure a failover group for Azure SQL Database? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

At least one database on the primary server.. Options B, C, and D are correct. A failover group requires a primary server, a secondary server, and at least one database on the primary server. Option A is incorrect because the failover group listener is automatically created and does not need to be separately configured. Option E is incorrect because an elastic pool is optional; failover groups can contain individual databases or elastic pools.

Answer

Failover group listener.

Answer

An elastic pool.

Question 20

Which TWO disaster recovery options are available for Azure SQL Database? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Auto-failover groups.. Active geo-replication and auto-failover groups are the two primary disaster recovery options for Azure SQL Database. Active geo-replication provides asynchronous replication of a database to a secondary region, while auto-failover groups extend this by allowing failover of multiple databases and providing read-only endpoints. Options A (database mirroring) and D (log shipping) are not supported for Azure SQL Database. Option C (Always On availability groups) is a feature for SQL Server on Azure VMs, not for Azure SQL Database.

Answer

Database mirroring.

Answer

Always On availability groups.

Answer

Log shipping.